


Powerless

by Minxie



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: 122 Gap Filler, M/M, QAF (US)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minxie/pseuds/Minxie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>As long as Brian doesn't look down, his night can end with the dance.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Powerless

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to leela_cat and vl_redreign for the beta read!

Brian ignores everything. He sits and stares blindly into the empty corridor, getting lost in the white of the walls and the even pattern of the tile. As long as he doesn't look down, doesn't see the blood, there's a chance that it isn't real, that Justin isn't behind one of those doors – _third one on the left_ – fighting for his life.

As long as Brian doesn't look down, his night can end with the dance.

His fingers are tacky, sticking intermittently as he rubs them together. It's easy enough to imagine a drink, one of Em's Cosmos, spilled and drying on his hands. Maybe while they moved from the bar to Babylon's dance floor. Just like always.

So long as he doesn't look down, doesn't _see_ the dark red – drying to a lifeless brown – stains across his fingertips.

The heavy smell of copper is harder to ignore. It has its own set of memories that lead back to blood and beatings and, _goddammit_, Justin.

It takes him a minute, sixty ticks of the second hand, to force the automatic response to the odor in a different direction, to stop the replay of Justin's attack from looping in his mind. Sixty fucking seconds of being totally powerless again, of watching Justin _bleed_ until finally, _fucking finally_ Brian replaces it with the night it was him – _not Justin_ – on the ground, bleeding.

Brian can handle the scent, the smell of defeat and hurt, as long as it is _his_ blood, _his_ hurt. Because, fuck knows, he's at least earned getting the shit kicked out of him.

It's when Michael arrives, when he silently sits beside Brian and _touches_ him, that the facade finally cracks. It's the silent show of support – support that Brian knows he doesn't deserve, hasn't earned – it's the support that undoes him... unfailing support in a situation made of nothing but fail.

Their night flashes through Brian's mind, single images cycling through one after another after another. The fucking dance that started it all. The smile that Justin gave him – perfect and happy, on top of the world. And then the bat swinging through the air. The scarf... the blood... Justin lying there, just... gone.

Brian flinches, fights off the same wave of desperation he felt in the parking garage and searches for a different memory. Any memory other than... other than the one which proves just how useless Brian Kinney really is, how he couldn't get there fast enough, couldn't stop his... Justin from crumpling to the concrete.

Finally he lights on one. It's the same bland hallway that he's losing himself in, the hospital corridor. But instead of someone dying, of Justin dying, they're running through the halls, laughing and playing as they race towards new life, towards Gus.

Then, when Brian admits that he was just as powerless that night, that he has been since fucking meeting Justin Taylor, he slips and everything he's been holding back starts to spill.

One goddamn tear at a time.

_...end..._


End file.
